The testnet is a wonderful place where you can experiment with the Decred applications without worrying that a mistake will cost you real money. It is actually recommended that people use the testnet to learn the basics of the Decred software and any new features.

Decred is currently on its 3rd Testnet, also known as testnet3. Testnets are periodically reset to help keep a manageable blockchain file size.

Running a testnet3 node is incredibly easy. You application of choice will need to download the testnet3 blockchain, and you will need to create a new wallet file for testnet3 use. Your mainnet blockchain and wallet files will remain untouched. Switching between the two is incredibly easy.

To launch dcrd and dcrwallet on testnet, simply add the --testnet flag to your launch command. Alternatively, you could put testnet=1 in all of your config files, but it’s usually much faster to use the startup flag.

On the first launch of dcrd --testnet, dcrd will begin downloading the testnet3 blockchain to the data/testnet3 folder of dcrd‘s home directory.

Before you’re able to launch dcrwallet with the --testnet flag, you must create a separate testnet wallet using the dcrwallet --testnet --create command. The steps are the same as those found in the dcrwallet Setup Guide.

To issue commands to both dcrwallet and dcrd, you must also add the --testnet flag to any of the dcrctl commands that you use. E.g. you would issue the dcrctl --testnet --wallet getbalance command to check your testnet balance.